title: Free-ranging chickens in households in a periurban shantytown in Peru--attitudes and practices 10 years after a community-based intervention project.
abstract: Free-ranging chickens are often found in periurban communities in developing countries, and their feces can pose a significant public health sanitation problem. Corralling chickens raised in these periurban areas in chicken coops has been proposed previously as an intervention to address this problem. Aims of this study were to revisit households in a corralling intervention study conducted in 2000-2001 to compare poultry-raising practices and investigate current attitudes regarding the impact of raising chickens in a periurban environment. Sociobehavioral questionnaires were given sequentially to all study participants; 30 families (58%) ceased raising poultry of any kind, whereas 42 (81%) do not raise chickens in their home. This finding indicates a significant reduction in poultry-raising in our study population since 2000-2001, possibly because of acculturation and/or change in socioeconomic status. However, attitudes about corral use for raising poultry were overwhelmingly positive, and the most common reason cited was cleanliness of the home.
authors.affiliation: Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112, USA. Lmartin7@tulane.edu
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Martinez
authors.forename: Gisela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Collazo
authors.forename: Lilia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cabrera
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bernabe-Ortiz
authors.forename: Yasnina
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ramos-Peña
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Oberhelman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000822:Animal Husbandry; D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010568:Peru; D011203:Poverty; D012499:Sanitation; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult